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Judge denies disability claim for firefighter injured in fight over Elvis' birthday

 

NEW YORK _ New York's highest court denied a disability claim resulting from a beer-fueled fight over Elvis Presley's birthday that ended with one New York City firefighter breaking a chair over the back of another, who then filed for disability retirement.

 

The New York Court of Appeals, in a 7-0 decision Tuesday, said that Robert Walsh wasn't eligible for an “accident disability retirement†because of the fight, but instead must settle for a lower-paying ordinary disability retirement. In doing so, the court upheld two lower court rulings.

 

Walsh cannot receive accident disability retirement payments “unless it can be determined as a matter of law on the record that the disability was the natural and proximate result of a service-related accident,†the court said. “That is plainly not the case here, where (Walsh's) injuries resulted solely from an altercation with a fellow firefighter rather than his performance of any job duties.â€

 

The fight occurred in December 2003 when, according to court documents, firefighters at Ladder Company 76 on Staten Island were sitting around the firehouse kitchen, drinking beer out of plastic cups and arguing about the date of Presley's birthday.

 

The dispute escalated and, eventually, Walsh accused a colleague of taking overtime from other firefighters. Another firefighter, Michael Silvestri, threatened to hit Walsh with a chair. Walsh remained seated with his back to Silvestri, who picked up the chair and hit Walsh, knocking him to the floor. Silvestri punched Walsh in the face until others stopped it, according to court documents.

 

Walsh said he suffered neurological damage that prevented him from returning to duty and filed for “accident disability retirement.†The Fire Department Pension Fund board of trustees denied his claim and instead awarded him the ordinary disability retirement.

 

Walsh challenged the determination, saying his injuries weren't the result of a “normal foreseeable risk of the work he performed,†according to court documents.

 

Two lower courts denied his claim. Information wasn't immediately available about the monetary difference in the two types of disability payments.

 

http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/344717/group/News/

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This is one of the problems this world has - a lack of tolerance. A few years ago one magazine geared toward farangs thought it was terrible for some Thai children to wear t-shirts with swatizakas on them. The swatizaka is a Buddhist auspicious symbol. The symbol is used by other cultures such as the American Hopi Indians.

 

Yeah true - as a species we are getting less tolerant, but I still fail to see why a person wearing a swastika to a jewish school in the US or elsewhere would not expect a flogging. Tolerance works both ways, and if one was to do that (wear a swastika to a primarily jewish place) - IMO they would be looking for trouble.

 

And yes, we all realise the original meaning of the swastika was peace, love and all that crap. But to the majority of westerners (as per the example), especially Jews - it means something entirely different, and I personally wouldn't blame them for being offended if that person was being obviously deliberately inflammatory.... if that's a word.

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Hey Steve ! I read where Obama said on 60 Minutes that he thinks his administration is the fourth best in the history of the country. 5555555555555 Oh my God !

Is there any height of bullshit that Obama can't reach? He just keeps piling shit higher and higher. This guy is fucking nuts ! And Harvard just dropped about 100 places among the top universities in the country. LOL Obama's stand up comedy act is ready for the road. Get goin' Barry ! (BTW, his comment was edited out. Not surprising that the leftist CBS didn't want to make him out the fool that he is.)

 

Here's the link. Too fucking funny 555555555555555555

 

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/pj-gladnick/2011/12/16/60-minutes-broadcast-edits-out-laughable-obama-claim-4th-greatest-presi

 

HH

 

 

If McCain had one the election would he have done much better or would he have done even worse?

 

It is hard to judge a President.

For example President Grant is generally given poor reviews and those reviews generally don't

reflect the state the country was in, what the President had to work with, etc. What we generally

hear about President Grant is rheteric - which is very similar to what we hear from the Republicans about Obama.

 

Do you really consider the end of Bin Laden to be irrevelant?

 

And what about ending the Iraq war...... the same?

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Many Republicans not wanting to pass legislation they favor for no reason other than not passing may make Obama look bad.

Thoroughly and utterly disgusted with large number of Republicans. The party is rotten at its core. The party would rather hurt Americans than give any semblence of apearance that Obama may have done something even if they agree. Furthermore in the past, they laud any compromise by Obama as proof he is weak. Further making any future compromise untenable. This is NOT the party I want running things. A party that sees the opposition party as the enemy in everything. Too many Republicans view the party AS America. Its one and the same to them and anything else is anti American. The party is wrought with hypocracy. It talks about backing candidates because they are Christian because afterall this is a judeochristian nation but have no problem backing a Mormon, a faith the fundamentalist view as a cult over a Obama who is a self confessed born again Christian. Romney's religion shouldn't even be an issue. Its inconsequential. They talk about debt and all its evils but both Reagan and Dubya left the nation with huge debts. Oh, but its okay because they were Republican. Its so much utter BS. Also, if you are a Republican and you actually work with Dems you're tainted, not good enough. McCain was not liked because he actually worked with Dems to bring about important legislation. Huntsman was ruled out of the race immediately for accepting an ambassadorship to China under Obama. Its a sick party and it doesn't support anyone in it who can do anything other than parrot the part line and be willing to be controlled by the heirarchy and the big money organizations that gives them money.

 

Someone said it best a few months ago. Democrats want to protect America from entities (big oil, etc.), while Republicans want to protect America from other Americans.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/house-republicans-cave-payroll-tax-cuts-extension-140256639.html

 

"This isn't a typical Democrat versus Republican issue. This is an issue where an overwhelming number of people in both parties agree," the president said today. "How can we not get that done? Has this place become so dysfunctional that even when people agree to things, we can't do it? It doesn't make any sense."

 

The president, who delayed his vacation to Hawaii with his family because of the stalemate, was surrounded by individuals who wrote to the White House detailing how the end of the payroll tax break would affect their lives.

 

The White House is pursuing an aggressive campaign on social media to highlight the loss in benefits that millions of Americans will incur on Jan. 1 if Congress doesn't act. Americans, on average, would lose about $40 per paycheck if the tax cuts expire. On Wednesday, Obama himself personally took to Twitter asking Americans to share what that loss would mean to them.

 

"Forty dollars can make all the difference in the world," Obama said today, as he read out stories from Americans who had responded to his request. "Enough is enough. The people standing with me today cannot afford any more games."

 

Obama said more than 30,000 people have responded to the White House's "What 40 Dollars a Paycheck Means to American Families" campaign on Twitter, Facebook and whitehouse.gov.

 

House Republicans faced increasing pressure, even from their Senate counterparts, to find a compromise quickly. Outwardly, the House GOP leadership showed no outward sign of caving in, reiterating defiantly that they would not support the Senate bill.

 

"The fact is, we can do better," Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in a news conference. "It's time for us to sit down and have a serious negotiation and solve this problem."

 

But internally, even rank and file House Republicans were beginning to break away from House Speaker John Boehner and the GOP leadership's insistence that Congress approve a year-long deal to extend the payroll tax cut, instead urging the speaker to consider a short-term deal.

 

Rep. Sean Duffy, a freshman Republican from Wisconsin, today called on his leadership "to immediately bring up the Senate's two-month extension for an up or down vote."

 

"Middle class families deserve a Congress that will rise above the squabbling and ensure their taxes don't go up right after Christmas," Duffy wrote in a statement. "This is about preventing hardworking Wisconsin families from paying an extra $40 a week for the dysfunction in Washington, D.C."

 

Another House Republican freshman, Rep. Rick Crawford of Arkansas, wrote a letter to the speaker that asked for all options to be on the table as time runs short.

 

"We are now in a position that requires all options to be on the table, that requires Republicans to not only demand a willingness to compromise, but to offer it as well," Crawford wrote in a letter to Boehner.

 

All week long, conservatives ranging from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to Karl Rove took shots at Boehner and the House GOP for holding out for a long-term extension.

 

"There's no doubt this hurts the Republican Party, and that bothers me a great deal, as a Republican," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said on CBS News this morning, adding that he feels bad for American taxpayers who are "innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire."

 

"This is really tragic for the American people. And I would say that next November, no incumbent is safe, nor should they be," McCain said.

 

Senior Democrats today pounced on Republicans for not agreeing to the two-month extension.

 

"Republicans have been arguing about process and politics," House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer said today. "The stakes are too high to be arguing about politics and process. The Republican contention that the two-month compromise somehow is unworkable is simply untrue."

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I have absolutely no faith in Romney. Newt has a lot of baggage and I actually think he could do a few things good believe it or not. He's a wild card though. I don't know if he has the temperment for the office. He may be a bit too thin skinned. In any event Obama, even though he's been disappointing (Not the same reasons Republicans do) may surprise us if he gets a second term. The old adage that a President spends the first 4 years trying to get re-elected and the last 4 years trying to get into the history books may embolden Obama. I think he will quite possibly have a great 2nd term.

 

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/21/matt-damon-slams-obama-democrats-one-term-balls_n_1162511.html?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl2%7Csec3_lnk1&pLid=122259&ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=321726,b=facebook

 

Matt Damon, one of Barack Obama's earliest supporters and once one of his most staunch advocates, slammed the President in the new issue of Elle Magazine.

 

"I've talked to a lot of people who worked for Obama at the grassroots level. One of them said to me, 'Never again. I will never be fooled again by a politician,'" Damon tells the magazine. "You know, a one-term president with some balls who actually got stuff done would have been, in the long run of the country, much better."

 

Referring to the Occupy Wall Street movement, Damon continued: "If the Democrats think that they didn't have a mandate -- people are literally without any focus or leadership, just wandering out into the streets to yell right now because they are so pissed off ... Imagine if they had a leader."

 

That echoes the President's own words to Diane Sawyer in March of 2010 when he said, "I'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president... There's a tendency in Washington to think that our job description, of elected officials, is to get reelected. That's not our job description. Our job description is to solve problems and to help people."

 

The slam follows in the same vein as a number of other criticisms Damon has made of the President and the Democrats, including in March, when he criticized Obama's education policy.

 

"I really think he misinterpreted his mandate. A friend of mine said to me the other day, I thought it was a great line, 'I no longer hope for audacity,'" Damon told CNN host Piers Morgan. "He's doubled down on a lot of things, going back to education... the idea that we're testing kids and we're tying teachers salaries to how kids are performing on tests, that kind of mechanized thinking has nothing to do with higher order. We're training them, not teaching them."

 

Later that month, he hit Obama on his handling of the economic crisis.

 

 

"I think he's rolled over to Wall Street completely. The economy has huge problems. We still have all these banks that are too big to fail. They're bigger and making more money than ever. Unemployment at 10 percent? It's terrible," he told the Independent. Damon also criticized the President's inability to get transformative things done, saying, "They had a chance that they don't have any more to stand up for things. They've probably squandered that at this point. They'll probably just make whatever deals they can to try to get elected again."

 

Currently, Obama and the Democrats are fighting with the House GOP over passing a compromise two month extension of the payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits, amongst other things; they've already removed increased taxes on the wealthy from the deal.

 

Damon's criticism rings with disappointment after he so publicly lent his support to the then-Senator Obama during the 2008 election. He spent time campaigning for the then-candidate at rallies, promoting him through a MoveOn video contest and attending fundraisers for the man who would become the 44th President.

 

In August, the star ripped a cameraman and reporter from a conservative publication who challenged his stance on education at a Save Our Schools event in Washington, DC. He then moved on to economic policy criticism.

 

"The wealthy are paying less than they paid at any time else, certainly in my lifetime, and probably in the last century," Damon told a reporter at the same event. "I don't know what we were paying in the Roaring '20s; it's criminal that so little is asked of people who are getting so much. I don't mind paying more. I really don't mind paying more taxes. I'd rather pay for taxes than cut 'Reading is Fundamental' or Head Start or some of these programs that are really helping kids. This is the greatest country in the world; is it really that much worse if you pay 6% more in taxes? Give me a break. Look at what you get for it: you get to be American."

 

Speaking of the then-protracted negotiations over the debt ceiling, he did show some sympathy for Obama.

 

"I'm so disgusted," he said. "I mean, no, I don't know what you do in the face of that kind of intransigence. So, my heart does go out to the President. He is dealing with a lot."

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I am surprised the Republicans came to an agreement with extending 'tax cuts'.

It took more sober headed Republicans to do it. The Senate has a reputation for being the more savvy of the two houses. The fact they were willing to hurt people knowingly and go against something they are for just to spite Obama says it all. Large parts of the party is simply disgusting. All the more reason for me to continue not voting for any of them since a few years ago.

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